Harnessing cultural fragrance for meaningful game development

Games regularly represent fictional and real-world cultures through narrative and environmental design. This representation is sometimes designed and considered, and other times is an unintended outcome of creating an interactive game world. For real-world cultures, this can result in experiences that acknowledge and spotlight elements of culture but are often skin-deep representations. This paper examines games, and the development practices, where cultural representation is the core design pillar. For this, I introduce the concept of cultural fragrance (Pepe, 2015), distilling cultural identity into an essence, which drives all design decisions. This paper defines and contextualises cultural fragrance through analysis of narrative games that are culturally odourless, lacking in distinct cultural identity, or a mixture of cultural identities which combine to form an identity abstracted from a specific culture of origin. Game development processes and their role in mixed culture creation are also considered. Two case study projects are presented: a Scottish-Gaelic-themed game jam, Kilted Otter, that aimed to inspire game development through the provision of cultural narratives and an experience report of an ongoing game project based on Outer Hebridean cultural heritage, Waulking the Tweed. These games seek to outline key considerations for culture-first narrative game development.
In designing cultural fragrance, developers must first encapsulate a cultural experience — the fragrance, and then examine how this can be embedded in design and portrayed playfully. Developers should then navigate the extent to which they are prepared to abstract culture and as a result, compromise on the project’s authenticity. I examine the lessons from media and case study analysis and share strategies for fellow practitioners to create culturally meaningful, fun games.

This paper discusses how real-world culture is represented in games, and the benefits of adopting a culturally fragrant identity to game development to enable more authentic cultural representation.